The beast growled low at Thane, though its glare never left Raze.
It was as if the creature was calculating a path to tear Raze apart while keeping just enough distance to avoid Thane entirely.
Anyone with eyes could see it. Even though Thane was clearly the greater threat, the beast could sense something else—that raw, untamed power. It hit even harder than the overwhelming aura Luna radiated.
This beast standing before him would not budge.
"You have won," Thane said, his voice flat and monotone.
"Stand down." His command carried an unmistakable authority, heavy with the tone of someone who deeply wished he were doing literally anything else right now.
The beast's gaze darted from Thane back to Raze's motionless body, weighing its options, before finally sinking back into the shadows.
Thane's expression never shifted, his eyes tracking something unseen as the shadows closed in.
From up in the stands, Aldric's voice shattered the silence.
"Hey, Thane!"
Just hearing that man speak made Thane feel his mental workload instantly double.
"Don't give the pup too much trouble—after all, you stole his prey."
Thane let out a quiet sigh. He knew exactly what Aldric meant. James was clearly not in control right now.
Besides, the intelligence report Thane had requested on James's background had finally arrived a few weeks ago.
The process had been simple enough. They didn't have security camera footage out in those rural stretches, but the realm had Fay, and it had animals.
Once they pinpointed the general area where James grew up, it was just a matter of interrogating the local wood nymphs and forest sprites.
They were the eyes and ears of the wilderness, even if negotiating with those fickle, chatty little beings was an utter headache.
In the end, he had assembled a complete map of James's life.
Born on February 29th at midnight in the year 2000 under a rare blue moon, he was the son of two humans.
His father was likely a retired hunter, given his suspiciously deep knowledge of the supernatural, while his mother had been deeply attuned to spiritual forces.
When the boy was young, his mother passed away under mysterious circumstances.
Then, at age sixteen, his father was killed in what appeared to be a targeted supernatural attack.
The boy was the sole survivor.
All of this was to say: family was a raw, bleeding wound for James. And Raze had poked that bear one too many times.
/
As Thane followed James through the shifting shadows, the memory of the information he had gathered resurfaced in his mind.
{Flashback}
Roughly a month ago—around the same time the boy was still unconscious in the cage, recovering from the blow Luna had dealt him—Thane stood motionless in the heart of the woods.
The surrounding forest throbbed with vibrant, ancient life.
From the trunk of a towering oak, a ethereal woman emerged, her form coalescing from bark and leaves.
Smaller, shimmering creatures drifted between the branches, and the trunks themselves seemed to murmur in low, grinding tones.
A chorus of high-pitched, musical whispers chimed through the canopy, accompanied by the delicate rustle of unseen footsteps and soft, mocking laughter echoing around him.
"A great wolf treads upon our roots, seeking secrets... How curious, how curious..."
"What does the shadow-bound hunter desire from the green? Tell us, grand wolf..."
Thane remained silent for a moment. One must never forget the cardinal rule: never reveal a true name to the Fay or their kin.
He weighed his words with precise caution.
"I seek information on the youth—the human whom Lady Luna turned within these woods a few days past."
It was vague enough. He offered no specific names, yet the timeframe was narrow, and Luna had claimed only one human in these lands.
The wood nymph tilted her head, her eyes gleaming like starlight through a leafy canopy. "Ah... You speak of the child touched by the silent tides. The one blessed by the silver eye above..."
Thane said nothing, simply waiting. He knew they were probing him, dangling thread after thread to goad him into speaking a name, but he was no novice to the old ways.
While forest nymphs were not true Fay in the strictest sense, they walked the same hidden paths.
If a nymph possessed a name, a passing Fay could wring it from them in an instant, and just like that—your identity belonged to another.
The spirit floated forward, her voice humming like a autumn wind through dry leaves. "The Moon's favored child crossed the threshold of life on the twenty-ninth of February, precisely at the midnight turn, twenty-three years ago—under the quiet alignment of the rare Blue Moon."
Thane's expression remained stoic, though he noted the detail carefully.
"Indeed," another soft voice chimed from the hollow of an elderberry tree. "We recall the night the sky wept silver and cobalt. A child whose very first breath was woven into the convergence of the stars."
Thane's brow furrowed. He knew the boy possessed an unusual aura, but how had a force like that gone unnoticed for so long?
Anyone with even a rudimentary grasp of spiritual sensing should have felt him from miles away.
In the grand scheme of things, his presence should have shone like a burning beacon in the night.
To remain hidden for over two decades was not just luck; it meant something formidable had cast a veil over him.
Thane pressed further.
"A child born under such celestial alignments carries an overwhelming spiritual footprint. His birth alone should have sent shockwaves across the region. Every wandering stray, every rogue pack, and every practitioner in the surrounding cities would have felt the flare immediately. He should have been claimed or hunted before his first day ended. How did he remain hidden for twenty-three years?"
The dryad let out a soft, melodic laugh that sounded like dry autumn leaves rustling across marble.
"He drew his first breath far from the stone structures of men, wolf," the spirit murmured, gliding closer until her breath smelled of pine and damp earth.
"No iron walls contained him, nor did modern ink mark his arrival. He entered this realm in the untamed sanctuary of our sacred grove, beneath a canopy woven tight by his mother's own desperate warding."
So a bargain had been struck with a power beyond the grove.
"Who did she call upon?" Thane demanded smoothly.
The nymph's luminous eyes dimmed slightly, her tone dropping into a hollow whisper.
"That truth is shrouded from us. We know only that the entity was ancient, and the mother spoke in a tongue not born of this land's soil."
"I have no need for the tongue," Thane replied, his tone heavy. "Give me the name."
The spirits swayed in unison, their voices blending into a single rustling murmur.
"Baron..." That was all they offered.
Thane had that information for a while, and as he walked inside the prison, he pondered to himself on what kind of spirits may this boy had been contracted to.
As the door to the cell open, what he saw was Bronn and a now awake pup, about to throw down.
{Flashback End}
Thane's focus snapped back to the present, his eyes locked onto the glowing talisman resting against the boy's chest.
The beast was no longer lurking in the darkness. It lay collapsed on the floor, growling in pain after attempting a strike from the blind spot behind him—only for Thane to check its momentum with a brutal, backwards elbow to the ribs.
"Fuck, that hurt." Thane looked down at the boy on the floor, where the beast had completely reverted back to human form.
The young pup sat there, clutching his nose in sheer pain.
"That stung..." James blinked hard, his stomach aching like never before. He felt like he'd been gut-punched and then backhanded straight into next week.
"Wait… I can see." James blinked again, momentarily forgetting the ache as he realized his vision had returned—his eyes were completely healed.
It seemed like shifting into his werewolf form had solved that issue, which was definitely good to know.
He slowly looked up, only to find Thane towering over him, glaring down with an unreadable expression. James immediately went on high alert, hurriedly scrambling backward along the dirt.
"Um… did I mess up?" James offered a wry, anxious smile, looking like a child who had absolutely no clue what he had done wrong.
Yet Thane said nothing, continuing to stare a hole right through him until James felt like his soul was about to leave his body.
Oh fuck, maybe I really did mess up. What the hell had he done while he was blacked out?
Meanwhile, up in the stands, Luna stared in disbelief at the total lack of wounds on his body. It appeared he had completely healed the moment he transformed—something that shouldn't have been possible.
Sure, shifting could patch up minor scrapes, and a full transformation might eventually regenerate major trauma or lost limbs, but severe injuries usually transferred over into the beastial form.
Just look at Raze: he had transformed into a werewolf, yet the lingering damage from James's earlier hit still left him operating at less than half his usual power.
Yet James, who by all rights should have been blinded for at least the next hour, had his sight fully restored.
Before Luna could speak, her father stood up.
The atmosphere in the massive arena shifted in an instant. Aldric's aura surged outward like a physical force—a heavy, suffocating pressure that seemed to crush the very air in the room, making every heart stutter in its chest.
"The pup has proven himself!" His voice boomed through the space, vibrating through the stone walls.
James, still panicking internally, cast a nervous glance toward the mountain of a man.
"You all witnessed it before your very eyes!" Every single wolf felt the weight of the Alpha's command, clearly understanding that he was officially introducing the pup. "If anyone believes he is not fit, let them speak now, or let this stand!"
Internally, James was desperately praying that no one else would step forward to fight him. He'd had more than enough action for one day.
His entire body ached with a deep, throbbing soreness, and all he wanted right now was to devour a mountain of food and collapse into a three-day sleep.
Shit… school tomorrow… FUUUUUUUUUUUUU-CK.
Ignoring his silent mental breakdown, Luna kept her focus locked on her father.
"May the ceremony begin!"
At his command, the rhythm of the drums abruptly changed.
The heavy, thunderous beat of war dissolved into a slow, primal melody—a rhythm far more tribal, hypnotic, and ancient in nature. As the shimmering warding barriers around the ring vanished, the entire energy of the arena transformed into something reverent and surreal.
James looked around, completely lost as the mysterious sound washed over him.
"What… what is happening?" he muttered, entirely overwhelmed by the sudden turn of events.
Talia let out a massive, ragged breath she hadn't realized she was holding, slumping back against the stone railing as her shoulders finally dropped. A huge, relieved grin spread across her face.
"He's actually alive," she breathed, wiping a faint bead of sweat from her forehead. "The crazy idiot actually pulled it off."
Kaela took another long, leisurely swig from her massive, enchanted jug, a loud, satisfied ahhh escaping her lips as she wiped her mouth with the back of her hand. "Told you," she chuckled, her voice thick with smug amusement. "The pup's got way too much stubbornness in him to die that easily. You worried over nothing, kiddo."
Beside them, Caius remained perfectly still, his sharp, calculating eyes locked entirely on the pit below. His gaze lingered specifically on James's face.
His sight returned completely upon shifting, Caius analyzed internally, his mind racing through the biological anomalies. The severe optic nerve damage from Raze's magma aura should have taken hours to repair, even in a full beast state.
Yet his core completely bypassed the lingering elemental burn. His adaptive cellular recovery is accelerating at an unprecedented rate...
Before Caius could ponder it further, a gentle flutter of dark wings cut through the heavy air above their section. A sleek, ink-black crow swooped down from the towering canopy, landing gracefully right on top of Caius's head.
The crow tilted its head, its dark, glossy eyes peering down toward the center of the arena where James was still sitting on the dirt, looking thoroughly bewildered.
"So... this is the newbie," the bird spoke, its voice crisp, composed, and distinctly female.
Talia's face instantly lit up. "Nyx! You're back!"
Without a second thought, Talia reached out, snatching the crow right off Caius's head and pulling the bird into a tight, enthusiastic hug against her cheek.
The crow didn't panic, clearly used to Talia's overly affectionate antics, though it let out a dry, exasperated sigh. "Talia... please. You are shaking my frame far too much."
"Oops! Sorry, sorry!" Talia giggled, loosening her grip and letting the crow perch comfortably on her forearm. She looked at the bird with bright, curious eyes.
"Where have you even been this whole time? You missed the entire brutal beatdown!"
"I was deep within the ancient boundary of the forest, tending to the elder trees," Nyx replied smoothly, smoothing down her ruffled feathers with her beak. "I only flew back toward the coliseum because I felt a sudden, massive surge of natural energy. The ambient magic around this arena became impossibly dense all at once."
"That would be the boy," Caius noted calmly, not even bothered by the fact that his head had just been used as a landing pad.
Nyx turned her sharp, intelligent gaze back down to the pit, locking her eyes onto the confused young adult standing in the center of the ring, surrounded by the reverberating tribal rhythm of the ceremony drums.
A/N should be 2.5k words, anyway, next chapter should be wednesday.
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